


of soup, stripteases, and simon snow

by watfordbird33



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clueless!Simon, Exasperated!Penny, I wish I had comebacks as good as Baz's, M/M, The Obligatory Fifth-Year Fic That All Writers In The Fandom Must Complete, Watford (Simon Snow), What else is new, too many italics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 14:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11876373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: “So you were--” Simon says, and makes groping motions at his chest and groin.“How very lewd of you,” Baz answers, unfazed.“Baz--the fuck--I didn’t know you were human enough to need to--to even, what the fuck, do you have enough blood--?”Baz stands up to face him, very fast.“Would you like a demonstration?” he leers, and Simon runs.





	of soup, stripteases, and simon snow

**Author's Note:**

> For the infinitely fabulous "Cake Read"; my beta and my best friend. Love you, bud <3
> 
> Warnings for sexual content, language, and crude humor. Once again, I should be working on other things. When I say this is unedited, I mean it.

It’s nearly ten o’clock when Baz slams open the door. He’s even whiter than usual, dark circles under his eyes, and from the bed Simon can see that he’s curling his fingers underneath themselves. To hide his fingernails?

“Off drinking blood, were you?” Simon says, as matter-of-factly as he can, except his voice does the squeak it’s been doing lately, and he sounds like a four-year-old. He attempts to redeem his dignity. “Killing little kids?”

Baz just stares for a minute, and then his brows sink and he gives Simon this look like he’s just so fucking exhausted. Like he can’t take very much more.

“That’s right,” he says, very level. “Slit a girl’s throat, tonight, and ate her entrails. I wrote  _ fuck Snow  _ in the remains when I was done.”

Simon winces in spite of himself, and Baz flashes a subdued sort of sneer in response. It’s weird, but he almost seems unsettled himself, like he’s surprised at his capability to narrate such violence.

“Did you use your fingernails?” Simon says, after a beat, nodding to Baz’s balled-up fists.

Baz looks at his hands, and then, like an afterthought, uncurls them. He holds them out towards Simon. Fastidiously clean. (The posh wanker.)

“Just my nine-inch fangs,” he says. “Gouged out her jugular and ate it raw.” 

And then, with a smirk, he goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.

 

Fifteen minutes later and Simon realizes what was strange--stranger than  _ usual,  _ he amends--about Baz and his ten o’clock arrival.

“Baz!” He pounds on the bathroom door. “Baz! Why was your shirt unbuttoned?”

Usually, Baz is the picture of immaculate tidiness, flawless and pressed at all hours. Even his pajamas look like they’ve been ironed. Simon has never seen him looking anything less than utterly composed. 

But there he is, when the door opens, hair swiped back and shirt undone down to his waist. He’s wearing a scowl like he’s thinking of killing Simon, right then and there. 

“I got a little hot,  _ Snow,” _ he says, with blistering contempt. 

Simon’s just kind of staring, unheeding, mouth open. He’s never seen Baz shirtless before. It’s rather glorious. He has this absurdly muscled chest for a fifteen-year-old, hard ribs and clean lines and round pecs that--have they--what the  _ fuck?  _ look like they’ve just been  _ fondled--? _

“Did you have  _ sex?”  _ Simon explodes.

Baz looks so startled by this that Simon kind of wants to take a picture: jaw dropped, flustered expression, eyes scared wide. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Baz so defenseless.

“Sex?” Baz says. “What the hell would make you--”

But he’s blushing.

“I’m not an  _ idiot!  _ Who was it? Who the fuck let your greasy dick get near enough--”

Baz hauls off and punches Simon, competently.

“You deserved that,” Baz chokes, making as if to close the bathroom door, “so don’t cry. Or go off. Or run to your little girlfriends and have them kiss it better. Can’t you just leave me alone for once, Snow? Can’t you just get the  _ fuck  _ out of my head?”

Here is the most surprising thing Simon Snow has ever seen: Basilton Grimm-Pitch reduced to tears in the doorway of their tower bathroom, tailored ensemble pulled apart and chest red and sore from someone else’s hands.

“Sex makes you emotional,” Simon says, burning up with this feeling he can’t quite name, and earns himself another punch.

 

“Who was it?”

Baz is facedown on his mattress, very still,  Simon is half-convinced he’s dead. He’s been prodding him about the girl for the last half-hour, but Baz hasn’t moved a muscle.

“Baz, who  _ was  _ it?”

Baz snorts. He is alive, then. “I’d think you were jealous, from the way you’re carrying on.”

Simon’s magic sparks a little, threateningly, and he swallows hard to tamp it down. “I’m not--” He thinks about it. Repulsed. “I’m not jealous.” If he was jealous, that would mean he’d be  _ gay, _ and even worse, that he-- “That’s stupid.”

“Then leave me be, won’t you?”

Simon gathers his courage. “Your chest looks--” 

He can’t say it. He physically can’t say it. That would mean he would have to admit he was staring at Baz’s chest in the first place, that he was looking closely enough to notice the irritated patches. 

(He’s starting to doubt himself more and more. What the fuck?)

“Pray tell, what  _ does  _ my chest look like?”

“You look  _ debauched,”  _ Simon blurts out, and then feels his whole body go red as Baz starts laughing, this silent, shaking laughter socked in behind a solid sneer.

“Debauched, Snow? And how would you know? I’m sure pretty little Wellbelove hasn’t educated--”

Simon bolts to his feet.  _ “Was it Agatha?” _

Baz laughs again, this long hissing sort of thing that makes Simon want to smack the amusement off his face. Or maybe kiss it. Wait, no. Shit. Smack. “You think I’d play games with Wellbelove? For the sole purpose of pissing you off? I wouldn’t touch that girl with a ten-foot pole.”

Simon’s nearly quivering with frustration. He takes one step, two steps--trusts himself and crosses the space between their beds. When he sits down at the foot of Baz’s, the mattress dips, and Baz stiffens.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to know. Who.  _ It is. _ The girl you fucked.”

“I detest that term,” Baz says, calmly, but when he sits up and faces Simon, there’s tension in his jaw. Less like anger and more like--well, Simon doesn’t really have a name for it. “It’s so crude. Besides, being a little heteronormative here, aren’t we?”

“Hetero--”

“You’re assuming it was a girl.”

Simon stares.

“Putting that aside, you’re assuming there was another person,” Baz adds, and grins, nastily.

“What--”

“Stop gaping, Snow. It’s unbecoming.”

“You’re saying you were  _ wanking-- _ in the  _ Catacombs-- _ ”

“I said no such thing,” Baz says, looking suitably shocked and amused. “How positively  _ filthy  _ of you to assume. But then again, you’re on my bed, so--”

Simon stands up. 

“Afraid of being caught?”

Simon’s not exactly sure when this conversation turned around and Baz took control of it. He’s feeling wildly uncomfortable and out of his depth, and not one hundred percent sure he’s following what Baz is implying.

“So you were--” Simon says, and makes groping motions at his chest and groin.

“How very lewd of you,” Baz answers, unfazed.

“Baz--the fuck--I didn’t know you were  _ human  _ enough to need to--to even, what the fuck, do you have enough  _ blood--?” _

Baz stands up to face him, very fast.

“Would you like a demonstration?” he leers, and Simon runs.

 

Penny is sitting with her arms folded across her bosom, her hair down, and an expression of utmost doubt arrayed upon her face. She presents an intimidating figure, especially because she keeps snickering halfway through the most serious parts of Simon’s story.

“--and then he asked if I wanted a  _ demonstration!” _

Penny takes off her glasses, flashes this half-quirk of a smile, and starts eating her soup again.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Simon asks her, stung.

She shrugs; spoons a mouthful; swallows. “He was hitting on you, Si,” she says, hoarsely; “what is there to say?”

Simon chokes on a chunk of meatball. Penny pounds him on the back and he performs a magnificent upheaval of meatball and carrot across the table. Rhys sends him a dirty look.  _ “Hitting on me?”  _ Simon says--squeaks, really, and coughs again. “What the actual fuck?”

Penny sighs. It’s her voice-of-reason-in-a-world-of-idiots sigh. “Simon,” she says. “Let’s be smart, here. Baz as good as admitted to you he’d been jerking off, flirted with you about it, and then asked if you wanted a demonstration.”

“He was plotting,” Simon says, recovering his meatball. “Via seduction.”

“Plotting, my ass. Seduction, not my ass. But it ain’t seduction if it goes two ways.”

Simon gapes, mouth half-full of soggy meatball. “Penny. You’re being--”

“If you weren’t straight, I’d say you liked him, too.”

_ “Liked him?”  _

“Why’d you press him so hard about the”--her voice drops-- _ “fondled chest,  _ anyway? Staring, were we?”

“You’re being absolutely incorrigible!” Simon shouts, almost in tears.

“I’m telling you things you’re refusing to tell yourself,” Penny says, calm. “If I cast a truth spell on you right now, you’d give up the real reason you asked about that fondled chest.”

“And you’d go to jail!”

“And you and Baz, the happy couple, would--”

Simon spits out another mouthful of soup and leaves the table.

 

“Playing dead, Snow?”

Simon flinches so hard when Baz comes in that he nearly falls off his bed. He sits up, reasserting himself, and tries to smooth down his hair.

“Relax. I don’t feel like eating you tonight, but maybe tomorrow,” Baz says.  Ordinarily the statement would sound smug, but today it just sounds sexual.

“I’m not--”

“I’m sure you’re not. Shouldn’t you be out with Little Miss Wellbelove?”

“She--ah, she canceled--”

Baz sneers. His shirt’s buttoned one notch higher than usual, and his tie is impeccably centered. Simon wants to grab that tie and rip it off. He wants to take Baz’s face in his hands and--

“You’re staring, Snow.”

“Not at you--at the wall--”

“I never accused you of staring at me.”

There’s a smirk growing on Baz’s lips.

“Baz, were you--”

A long silence. Baz takes a step into the room and closes the door. 

“Were you, um. Were you--um, were you hitting on me?”

Baz’s face goes bright red, and his jaw slackens. Simon feels this rush of angry heat go all through his chest.  _ Penny, I’m going to kill you,  _ he thinks, and gets prepared to stand up and leave.

“It’s just,” he blunders, easing to his feet, “you know, Penny said--”

“Bunce thinks I’m hitting on you?”

Simon manages an on-edge giggle. “She thinks I  _ like  _ you, too, so--”

Baz doesn’t say anything.

“Look, I didn’t mean to--I guess I was sort of an ass about the...you know, the--um, the wanking. Last night. Although you were an ass, too, so maybe we can forgive each other? For simultaneous asshood?”

Baz’s gaze is unfocused. “Bunce thinks you like me?”

Simon chuckles nervously. “Ha. And here’s the even dumber part. She means, like,  _ like  _ like.”

Baz swallows. The knob of his Adam’s apple rides up and then down in the long white column of his throat. “That’s absurd,” he says, and his voice doesn’t have his usual sneer in it. “You aren’t even gay. You’re practically a homophobe.”

“Practically a--” Simon scowls. “What?”

“Always,  _ I’m not gay  _ this,  _ I’m not gay  _ that.”

“I’m just  _ not gay.  _ That doesn’t mean I’m a  _ homophobe.  _ Honestly?”

Baz shakes that off. “Why would Bunce think--”

Simon tightens his fists and screws up his courage. “Apparently--noticing your--um--how you looked last night?”

“Who’s hitting on whom, Snow?” Baz says dryly. 

“I’m not--I--”

“Relax. I’m not going to trust Bunce’s conspiracy theories. I know you’re an asshole, and straight, to boot.” 

But he still looks paler than usual as he unknots his tie and loops it around his neck. (Simon thinks about grabbing the ends and pulling Baz towards him, til they’re flush and face-to-face.) 

“In answer to your question,” Baz says, pausing and startling Simon, “I wasn’t hitting on you. I was seeing how long it took to get you out of the room.”

“Bastard,” Simon says; a reflex.

“Prat,” Baz returns. He sits on his bed, knots his tie around the bedpost, and undoes the top button of his shirt. Now he looks less choked and more  _ Baz.  _ Simon’s gaze is glued to his deft fingers, the pale dexterity of them as he reaches for the second button. 

“Now you’re staring, Snow.”

Simon jerks his head up, blushing hot.

“You act like I’m stripteasing.”

Simon’s voice shakes, and he hates it for that. “You--um. Why aren’t you changing in the loo?”

“Do I need to?” Baz says, idly, working at the third button.

“Might as  _ well  _ be a striptease,” Simon babbles; “I’m starting to think Penny--”

Baz says, “If it was a striptease, I’d be flaunting my delicious ass. I’m not one to let my assets go unseen.”

Simon splutters.

“You seem uncomfortable, Snow.”

“I’m not--”

Baz slips the last button free and shrugs his shirt off his shoulders. He meets Simon’s gaze head-on. There’s a dangerous little smirk playing at the corners of his lips.

“Like what you see?”

Simon shakes his head. He can’t form words. 

Baz gets up and crosses the space between them. This close, he smells overwhelmingly of cedar and bergamot. Bare skin flashes at the bottom of Simon’s vision.

“What--what the fuck are you doing?” Simon stammers.

“Stripteasing,” Baz says, deadpan.

“You’re not--I’m not--”

“Keep telling yourself that, Snow.”

And he takes Simon’s jaw in both his hands and kisses him soundly on the lips. 

For a second there’s just this wild disbelief, and then feeling rushes back and Simon realizes: he’s kissing  _ BAZ.  _ His mortal enemy. The boy he can’t stop thinking about. He’s pressed all up against Baz’s naked chest (who exactly did Baz jerk off to thoughts of, last night?), smelling the Baz scent of him, inhaling warmth and cedar and this kind of hard salt smell that might be blood. 

Because Baz is a vampire. (Because he’s human.) 

Because he’s evil. (Because he’s just a boy.) 

Simon wrenches away.

“You  _ seduced  _ me,” he shouts, backing up, up, up, until his knees hit the bed and he falls awkwardly back onto his ass.

Baz arches an eyebrow. He smooths the front of his slacks, seemingly collected, but Simon can see the panic in his eyes. “You seemed pretty willing to me,” he says.

“Because of your wicked seduction!”

“My wicked seduction--and your sex drive.”

Simon shakes his head. “Why would you do that, Baz? What do you want from me?”

Baz looks incredulous. Then his expression slowly softens and he just looks sad. “What do I want from you?” he repeats. “Really, Simon?”

Simon can’t think straight. He touches his lips, then his chest, where Baz’s breastbone pressed. “You called me Simon.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

Baz says, sharply, “Does it matter? You clearly don’t care.”

He gets up and goes to his wardrobe, bending at the waist to reach for the drawer Simon knows contains his pajamas. The movement stretches his back gloriously--

Simon bites his lip so he won’t say something stupid.

“Better?” Baz says, vicious, and slips a pajama top over his head.

“I didn’t--I didn’t mean to--”

“Use your  _ words. _ ”

Simon stands up. His voice cracks. “I liked it.”

Baz freezes.

“I--I liked the kiss.”

“You--”

“Seduction or not,” Simon adds, and braces for fury. 

Instead, he gets a laugh--a grudging one.  _ “ _ Aleister Crowley. Only you.”

Simon relaxes. “Were you hitting on me, Baz?”

“Just a bit,” Baz replies, cautious, but he’s smirking: this hard little curl of a smirk that Simon wants to bite right off his mouth. 

“Just a bit?”

“I’m not attracted to you or anything.”

“Of course not,” Simon says, and puts his hands out. They end up on Baz’s shoulders, and then he’s drawing Baz close to him, up against his body, near enough so that they breathe each other’s air. 

“You’re not even gay,” Baz points out.

“Exactly,” Simon agrees, and this time he kisses Baz first.


End file.
